AEG has chosen the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Gensler to design its proposed football stadium in downtown L.A. This is an early rendering of what that stadium might look like.
/ AEG/Gensler

Plans for a football stadium in downtown San Diego have not progressed since Mayor Jerry Sanders and Chargers President Dean Spanos held a rare meeting March 7 to discuss their mutual desire to build the team a new venue.

Similar stadium plans in Los Angeles haven’t stopped making headlines.

The same day that Sanders and Spanos met for just the sixth time in more than five years, developer AEG began a lengthy process of obtaining an environmental impact report for a downtown Los Angeles stadium called Farmers Field. That project could entice the Chargers to move to the nation’s second-largest market.

Since then, AEG’s proposal has maintained its momentum.

First, the company chose the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Gensler to design its estimated $1 billion stadium. Then the public got a chance to weigh in at a city meeting required for the environmental report. Last Thursday, people flocked to a forum with an AEG executive, a Los Angeles city councilwoman and the developer of a competing stadium proposal in nearby City of Industry.

Buzz about the AEG stadium began picking up when the company secured a $700 million, 30-year naming-rights deal with Farmers Insurance in January.

Next week, more than 1,000 stadium architects, owners and operators the world over will descend on Los Angeles for the fourth Stadia Design & Technology Expo. Its keynote speaker? AEG President Tim Leiweke.

San Diegans can only follow the situation in Los Angeles from afar, almost as if it were a road playoff game, and await any local developments.

Leiweke and Majestic Realty executive John Semcken declined interviews for this story through their spokesmen. So did Sanders.

Yet in a wide-ranging interview on XX1090 Sports Radio on April 1, Sanders acknowledged he is watching the Los Angeles drama “to see how it unravels.”

This week, Sanders’ office rejected The San Diego Union-Tribune’s latest in a series of interview requests on the subject. It issued a statement saying progress is impeded by the uncertain future of redevelopment funds statewide — a potential source of money for an estimated $800 million San Diego stadium — and the National Football League’s labor dispute, which has a bearing on future stadium financing.

In his radio interview, Sanders called it “really important to keep the Chargers” and that the Los Angeles talk has spurred “other discussions, which are good now, with some private people.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Every time I talk to Dean, I really feel like he is committed to San Diego,” Sanders said. “His family has grown up here. His roots are here. I think he really appreciates the fans. ... So I still think we’ve got an excellent shot.

“If I were Dean, I’d be the most frustrated person on Earth,” he added. “And that’s the reason I’ve told him we’ll try to work with him, and we’ll put the weight of my office behind it as long as I can.”

While Chargers and San Diego officials continue to meet regularly with an eye toward putting a stadium plan to a public vote in November 2012, financial negotiations won’t begin until the state and the NFL resolve their unsettled issues.